Fighting for better financial education

Kimberly Batey holds up example letters as she helps her personal finance students write to Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah about health care reform, at Alta High School in Sandy on Monday, November 1, 2009. Many schools across the US are establishing personal finance programs to educate students about money at a younger age.

In an age of constant — and often conflicting — information, getting a solid financial education can seem like an overwhelming goal. Much of the responsibility to learn the language of finance continues to fall on the individual, with few resources to ease the burden.

As the Center for Financial Literacy at Champlain recently discovered, only 20 states in the U.S. offer what they deem to be an adequate financial education in their schools.

"We would not allow a young person to get in the driver’s seat of a car without requiring drivers education," the study's researchers wrote in the introduction, "and yet we allow our youth to enter the complex financial world often without any related education."

Such a lax view toward a central part of adulthood can be dangerous, and many teachers and finance experts are calling for a greater effort to teach money skills.

“The current generation of children will contend with many monetary issues that their parents and grandparents did not have to face,” writes Victor Luckerson in his article for Time titled “Making personal finance cool to kids.”

Luckerson highlights a school in Chicago, Henderson Elementary, that has introduced financial education curriculum beginning in the third grade. The program, which is now offered at 145 elementary schools in Chicago, focuses on “four pillars of finance” — saving, spending, donating and investing.

There is one snag, however, because finding good teachers to help students understand finance is hard, being that most adults themselves receive little formal training on the subject.

“Most financial planners focus on wealthier people, whom they can charge $1,000 to $3,000 for a financial plan,” Bernard writes. But Tobel’s ultimate goal is to convince common consumers that they can not only benefit from the advice finance experts have to offer, but they can afford it, too.

“Financial advice shouldn’t be a luxury,” Tobel told Bernard in the profile that ran Friday. “We want to disrupt the industry.”

JJ Feinauer is a graduate of Southern Virginia University and a content writer for the Moneywise page on DeseretNews.com. Email: [email protected], Twitter: @jjfeinauer.